Fat glared at me. "It's not funny. Some force or entity melted the reality around me as if everything was a hologram! An interference with our hologram!"
"But in your tractate," I said, "that's exactly what you stipulate reality is: a two-source hologram."
"But intellectually thinking it is one thing," Fat said, "and finding out it's true is another!"
"There's no use getting sore at me," I said.
David, our Catholic friend, and his teeny-bopper underage girlfriend Jan went to see Valis, on our recommendation. David came out of it pleased. He saw the hand of God squeezing the world like an orange.
"Yeah, well we're in the juice," Fat said.
"But that's the way it should be," David said.
"You're willing to dispense with the whole world as a real thing, then," Fat said.
"Whatever God believes in is real," David said.
Kevin, irked, said, "Can he create a person so gullible that hell believe nothing exists? Because if nothing exists, what is meant by the word 'nothing'? How is one 'nothing' which exists defined in comparison to another 'nothing' which doesn't exist?"
We, as usual, had gotten caught in the crossfire between David and Kevin, but under altered circumstances.
"What exists," David said, "is God and the Will of God."
"I hope I'm in his will," Kevin said. "I hope he left me more than one dollar."
"All creatures are in his will," David said, not batting an eye; he never let Kevin get to him.
Concern had now, by gradual increments, overcome our little group. We were no longer friends comforting and propping up a deranged member; we were collectively in deep trouble. A total reversal had in fact taken place: instead of mollifying Fat we now had to turn to him for advice. Fat was our link with that entity, VALIS or Zebra, which appeared to have power over all of us, if the Mother Goose film were to be believed.
"Not only does it fire information to us but when it wants to it can take control. It can override us."
That expressed it perfectly. At any moment a beam of pink light could strike us, blind us, and when we regained our sight (if we ever did) we could know everything or nothing and be in Brazil four thousand years ago; space and time, for VALIS, meant nothing.
A common worry unified all of us, the fear that we knew or had figured out too much. We knew that apostolic Christians armed with stunningly sophisticated technology had broken through the space-time barrier into our world, and, with the aid of a vast information-processing instrument had basically deflected human history. The species of creature which stumbles onto such knowledge may not show up too well on the longevity tables.
Most ominous of all, we knew -- or suspected -- that the original apostolic Christians who had known Christ, who had been alive to receive the direct oral teachings before the Romans wiped those teachings out, were immortal. They had acquired immortality through the plasmate which Fat had discussed in his tractate. Although the original apostolic Christians had been murdered, the plasmate had gone into hiding at Nag Hammadi and was again loose in our world, and as angry as a motherfucker, if you'll excuse the expression. It thirsted for vengence. And apparently it had begun to score that vengence, against the modern-day manifestation of the Empire, the imperial United States Presidency.
I hoped the plasmate considered us its friends. I hoped it didn't think we were snitches.
"Where do we hide," Kevin said, "when an immortal plasmate which knows everything and is consuming the world by transubstantiation is looking for you?"
"It's a good thing Sherri isn't alive to hear about all this," Fat said, surprising us. "I mean, it would shake her faith."
We all laughed. Faith shaken by the discovery that the entity believed in actually existed -- the paradox of piety. Sherri's theology had congealed; there would have been no room in it for the growth, the expansion and evolution, necessary to encompass our revelations. No wonder Fat and she weren't able to live together.
The question was, How did we go about making contact with Eric Lampton and Linda Lampton and the composer of Synchronicity Music, Mini? Obviously through me and my friendship -- if that's what it was -- with Jamison.
"It's up to you, Phil," Kevin said. "Get off the pot and onto the stick. Call Jamison and tell him -- whatever. You're full of it; you'll think of something. Say you've written a hot-property screenplay and you want Lampton to read it."
"Call it Zebra,"Fat said.
"Okay," I said, "I'll call it Zebra or Horse's Ass or anything you want. You know, of course, that this is going to shoot down my professional probity."
"What probity?" Kevin said, characteristically. "Your probity is like Fat's. It never got off the ground in the first place."
"What you have to do," Fat said, "is show knowledge of the gnosis disclosed to me by Zebra over and above, which is to say beyond, what appears in Valis. That will intrigue him. I'll write down a few statements I've received directly from Zebra."
Presently he had a list for me.
#18. Real time ceased in 70 c.e. with the fall of the temple at Jerusalem. It began again in 1974 c.e. The intervening period was a perfect spurious interpolation aping the creation of the Mind. "The Empire never ended," but in 1974 a cypher was sent out as a signal that the Age of Iron was over; the cypher consisted of two words: KING FELIX, which refers to the Happy (or Rightful) King.
#19. The two-word cypher signal KING FELIX was not intended for human beings but for the descendents of Ikhnaton, the three-eyed race which, in secret, exists with us.
Reading these entries, I said, "I'm supposed to recite this to Robin Jamison?"
"Say they're from your screenplay Zebra,"Kevin said. "Is this cypher real?" I asked Fat. A veiled expression appeared on his face. "Maybe."
This two-word secret message was actually sent out?" David said.
"In 1974," Fat said. "In February. The United States Army cryptographers studied it, but couldn't discern who it was intended for or what it meant."
"How do you know that?" I said.
"Zebra told him," Kevin said.
"No," Fat said, but he did not amplify.
In this industry you always talk to agents, never to principals. One time I had gotten loaded and tried to get hold of Kay Lenz, who I had a crush on from having seen Breezy. Her agent cut me off at the pass. The same thing happened when I tried to get through to Victoria Principal, who herself is now an agent; again, I had a crush on her and again I was ripped when I started phoning Universal Studios. But having Robin Jamison's address and phone number in London made a difference.
"Yes, I remember you," Jamison said pleasantly when I put the call through to London. "The science fiction writer with the child bride, as Mr. Purser described her in his article."
I told him about my dynamite screenplay Zebra and that I'd seen their sensational film Valis and thought that Mother Goose was absolutely perfect for the lead part; even more so than Robert Redford, who we were also considering and who was interested.
"What I can do," Jamison said, "is contact Mr. Lampton and give him your number there in the States. If he's interested he or his agent will get in touch with you or your agent."
I'd fired my best shot; that was it.
After some more talk I hung up, feeling futile. Also I had a minor twinge of guilt over my devious hype, but I knew that the twinge would abate.
Was Eric Lampton the fifth Savior who Fat sought?
Strange, the relationship between the actuality and the ideal. Fat had been prepared to climb the highest mountain in Tibet, to reach a two-hundred-year-old monk who would say, "The meaning of it all, my son, is -- " I thought, Here, my son, time turns into space. But I said nothing; Fat's circuits were already overloaded with information. The last thing he needed was more information; what Fat needed was someone to take the information from him.